During the early 18th century, Île Royale – present-day Cape Breton Island –became the home for displaced French settlers from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. For their protection, the French constructed a massive citadel at Louisbourg. Beginning June 1, 1758, the British laid siege to the fort for six weeks. A decisive British victory at Louisbourg opened the St. Lawrence River for an attack on Quebec the next year. This pair of maps depicts the town, fortress, and island during the siege. Lartigue, a French-Canadian, prepared the maps 33 years before the first printed map was produced in Canada.

Lartigue (1729-1772) served as the King's Keeper of Stores until his removal from that office in 1752. The map of the fortress shows the positions of batteries of canon and mortar within and outside the fortress, described in detail in the key. The map of the province of Isle Royale, apart from the place names, offers two "remarques" on the native inhabitants of the northern peninsula: "This part of the Isle is inhabited only by some savages, it is very wooded and filled with beautiful meadows" and again "The lines otherwise called roads highlighted in red designate the beaten paths (les chemins plaqué) of the Savages by which they travel in the Isle. This is only, properly speaking, paths traced where one man can barely pass."

This map can be viewed as a georeferenced overlay in an interactive application made especially for We Are One: Mapping America’s Road from Revolution to Independence. View the application here and here.